Archer row at TRX: work the lats in single arm

Training the lats in calisthenics it's always a problem. They are large, strong muscles that give their best with overloads: think of the lat machine, the joy of every bodybuilder, or the various barbell or dumbbell rowers.

If you then want work on symmetry, training one back at a time, the situation becomes even more complicated.

But something can be done.

Training the lats without weights

Usually, to train the bodyweight lats, the preferential ways are pull up and australian pull up. For both, you need a bar: a high bar, for pull-ups, or a low bar, for Australians. Alternatively, for the latter (also called inverted row) you can use a table, slipping under it and grabbing the top with your hands.

These are the basics of bodyweight lats training. In any case, you will train both lats at the same time, depriving you of the pleasure of isolation (as happens with the one-armed rower).

The alternative? Learn to do archer row.

Archer row: single-sided alternative for training the lats

Of course, you need the TRX, or a couple of rings (as with the TRX, there are some great rings that you can install in a snap on any tall stand, or rack if you have a proper home gym). Personally I prefer the rings to the TRX, but it is the taste for calisthenics that makes me say it.

Anyway: we said archer row at the TRX. This is the execution:

• TRX grips at chest height (it will be up to you to improve and lower them)
• you grab the handles and slide underneath. Their vertical falls roughly on your pelvis
• execute the pull, lifting yourself towards the rings, but ...
• … As you go up, one arm spreads and extends
• come down to the starting position, and repeat by spreading the other arm

This is a rep.

How to use archer rows

Since you have struggled to leave the house with the TRX in your backpack, to conquer your space at the pull-up bars of the park usually populated by gangas of instagrammatic calylstenes, and to install it, well, my advice is the classic antagonist superset:

• archer row series
• series of push up to the TRX
• break

This is a set, which allows you to train in one go both the pull and the push (without the boredom, as happens in the weight room, of having to set up two positions with a barbell). If the TRX or the rings are of the ones with the quick adjustment, you can - if and when you lower them to do push ups - take advantage of the asymmetry of the cables to make the uneven push ups, and replicate the one-sidedness that, for the lats, you just worked with the archer row.

Of course, if you're tough, you can do dips instead of push-ups – in which case rings prove to be the best choice for pinch (made with three fingers).

 

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Photos: Johnatan Borba on pexels.com, Ivan Samkov on pexels.com